Monthly Archives: June 2011

This digital story was conceived, storyboarded and photographed by Stage 3 students working with me in the library as part of the Shaun Tan book rap. Please feel free to comment. See the earlier post re using Photo Peach slideshows with students.

Here are some more Guided Inquiry Endangered animals (Stage 3 science & technology); three more of the students’ digital slideshows have now been uploaded to the world.

by Monica, Jacob & Caleb

by Zain, Will & Rhianna

by Jayde J., Madilyne & Ben

Enjoy! Share! And please feel free to comment. More slideshows will appear as the term comes to a close.

As mentioned previously, just a few points to consider with Photo Peach: Use it as judiciously as you would a series of Youtube clips. Don’t permit students to do open browsing; Photo Peach is a Web 2.0 facility that is open to anyone, and the slideshows are “unrated”. Also, if you notice that new comments have been added to a slideshow you’ve made, please preview the slideshow again before using it with students so you can monitor (and moderate/remove) unwanted comments. (Or close off comments altogether.) Consider a subscription to Photo Peach, which enables you to add your own or Creative Commons music, a wider range of transitions, and the capacity to download slideshows to your hard drive, web space or a CD.

Well, we are finally on the downhill stretch for our Guided Inquiry Endangered animals (Stage 3 science & technology). After weeks of being immersed in the concepts – and being exposed to, and evaluating, any number of professional, persuasive texts and images – and then several more weeks of individual research, and then the designing of group-negotiated storyboards, the first three of the students’ digital slideshows have now been uploaded to the world:

by Trent, Michelle & LatishaCompare the above slideshow with the students’ original storyboard.

by Tamara, Nandita & RileyCompare the above slideshow with the students’ original storyboard.

by Jeremy, Lisa, Kayla, Emily & PhoebeCompare the above slideshow with the students’ original storyboard.

Enjoy! Share! And please feel free to comment. More slideshows will appear as the term comes to a close.

By the way, just a few points to consider with Photo Peach: Use it as judiciously as you would a series of Youtube clips. Don’t permit students to do open browsing; Photo Peach is a Web 2.0 facility that is open to anyone, and the slideshows are “unrated”. Also, if you notice that new comments have been added to a slideshow you’ve made, please preview the slideshow again before using it with students so you can monitor (and moderate/remove) unwanted comments. (Or close off comments altogether.) Consider a subscription to Photo Peach, which enables you to add your own or Creative Commons music, a wider range of transitions, and the capacity to download slideshows to your hard drive, web space or a CD.

The inside text reads: Penrith Public School’s library stands on the site of a portable library building, and before that a previous portable building. In 2010, workmen excavating the foundations found these “school milk” bottles buried deep in the rubble. One is embossed “1/3 PINT PASTEURISED MILK”.

Stage 2 students are chugging along with preparing their “Why is my body part important?” skits/speeches/presentations and I wanted a few more examples of persuasive media from Youtube:

Bill Nye the science guy – “Whatta brain”

How many germs actually live on your hands?

Since none of the groups were able to choose the brain (we’d all agreed it was already “the most important body part”), and no one was tackling anything related to handwashing and germs, these clips should be motivational for the groups formulating their oral presentations. We’ve also discussed the elements of persuasive texts and images, and popular television game shows where individuals are eliminated after having to “perform” a task for a panel of judges. How will the groups ensure that their body part(s) can be “more important”?

On nswtl listserv this week, some teacher librarians raised the question of “Creative Commons” sections of photo gallery sites, such as Flickr and Google Images, and how they are usually blocked to our students by the DEC firewall because there’s simply no way to police the images and ensure that students won’t be exposed to unsavoury images during a lesson. I’d already been milling some ideas in my head and thought I’d transfer them to here as well.

It’s important to keep child protection in mind with ICT. Parents will not tolerate students discovering inappropriate digital images during lesson time, and an open search through Creative Commons may well bring that situation to a head. And too often. My interpretation of “responsible downloading” of images in the K-6 environment is: I use Flickr and Google Image sites with K-6 students to model the search on the IWB, or to a small group clustered around a monitor screen, and we search under my teacher-level username and password. Preferably, I test the searches beforehand.

Even then, I once had a class of Stage 1s discover, during an innocent (and pre-tested) image search on “cats”, an unexpected photograph of a startled cat pencil-sharper, with a pencil in its bottom. It caused great hilarity on the day, but it was a reminder that even a well-rehearsed search can go wrong – because new images are added to Flickr and Google Images every minute of the day. And my search-gone-wrong could have been so much worse.

Guided Inquiry (ie. Ross J Todd & Carol Kuhlthau) would say that any assignment which leaves students no option but to breach copyright is a poorly developed assignment in the first place. Not too much deep knowledge will be evident in a student’s supposedly-original production that features only cut ‘n’ paste text from websites and/or stolen, uncredited images from Google. The situation really isn’t that different since hideous “projects on cardboard” were invented way back in the 60s? (Earlier?) In those days, students used to cut images out of the school’s encyclopedias – and then photocopiers were invented and suddenly students were able to colour over b/w images they stole and somehow make it all better.

If the research question is designed correctly, it can’t be answered by stock text and images. The researched material also needs to be marked and approved by the teacher before final products are created, by which time any plagiarism opportunities should have been eliminated or made redundant (or avoided in the first place).

The students who tend to use the Internet responsibly aren’t likely to plagiarise unless their assignments stymie them into doing so. I’m deep into Guided Inquiry with Stages 2 and 3 at the moment and, as their storyboards and oral presentations take shape, there won’t be anyone feeling the need to steal other people’s information. If anyone does decide they need a particular existing image, then we’ll do a modelled search and find the right one in Creative Commons – under my username and password.

This metal newspaper rack was picked up in a St Clair bargain ship for $19.99. At the moment, it’s holding some copies of last year’s Premier’s Reading Challenge honour roll inserts.

This “Imagine” sign was already painted white. Not a bad find at $9.99, also at St Clair.

We actually spent today – between teaching – attempting to consolidate two poster racks, jammed full of posters, into one. A job we never attended to, even when we had the racks in storage while the new BER library was being built. Lots of the posters are terribly dated, especially the ones from the late 60s. A few we are keeping for pure nostalgia value.

When the rectangular-frame rack is empty, I plan to turn it into a puppet theatre. The other rack, which has crossbars, should hold what’s left of the posters, but I still think it’s an efficient storage method. The posters have had call numbers for many years, but were never accessioned. We hope to add a brief record for each to OASIS. It’s been frustrating that no posters appear in a subject hearing search. We aren’t going to go too overboard, though, because once every classroom has an IWB, posters in classrooms may well become obsolete.